The present invention relates to a personal identification system for conducting personal identification when an unspecified number of users read/write or transmit/receive various kinds of information.
The recent progress made in the field of communication networks such as the Internet is remarkable and individuals can easily receive or transmit various kinds of information over these communication networks. For example, it is possible to transmit/receive e-mail by connecting an information terminal apparatus such as a personal; computer to a mail server over a public line. Furthermore, it is also possible to connect a game machine as an information terminal apparatus to a server over a public line, send a game result to the server after the game is over and store it there, and later receive the game result from the server and continue the game from the previous scene.
By the way, the above described server is connected and used by an unspecified number of users, and so the server needs to identify individual users to prevent e-mail or game result of a third party from being received. For this purpose, individual users are given user IDs. Users enter these given user IDs and passwords accompanying these user IDs and the server identifies users based on these user IDs entered.
However, it is complicated for users to enter their user IDs every time they connect to the server. In the case of an information terminal apparatus used privately, it is possible to save a user from having to enter his/her user ID for every connection by storing the user ID in memory, etc. in the information terminal apparatus. However, in the case of a game machine installed in a game center where an unspecified number of people use the machine, it is impossible to store multiple user IDs from the standpoint of preventing misuse of those IDs, and so individual users need to enter their user IDs, which causes a problem of making operations complicated.
Moreover, as a method of entering user IDs, it is possible to let users carry IC cards storing their IDs, provide a card reader for the information terminal apparatus and let the users enter their passwords by inserting the IC cards into the card reader. In this case, those IC cards must be distributed to individual users and a card reader must be provided for the information terminal apparatus, which will increase the cost.
Furthermore, irrespective of whether a user directly enters his/her user ID or password or such information is automatically read from the IC card the user carries, it is necessary to control this information so that user IDs and passwords given to different users do not overlap each other.